SE, Please do somthing about the boring gear stats.. Please just read first...

[Nalien]

And don't even pretend such things would not be a requirement in PF and DF or even something as simple as FC recruitment.

I still believe the Materia system can be modified to provide the "interesting stuff" we can do with gear. Generic enhancements aren't the way to go.

Well now you've confused me. You're for Materia offering "interesting stuff"?

I can check your gear and see what Materia you've melded. I cannot check your own personal menu and see what stats you've unlocked/set. So you'd shoot down the suggestion no one but yourself can really check because people will be elitist, but you're for the one which people can actually out right check by examining you? That seems backwards to me, sorry.

As far as balance goes, individually I do not think these things would be particularly powerful or anywhere close to required. They would just be bonuses for people who want the bonuses, just like getting full raid-tier gear even though you cleared the raid without it to get it, except unlike such gear (and materia) elitist pricks wouldn't be able to examine you to determine whether you even have that 0.5% bonus. Something extra for the developers to worry about balancing, sure, but personally I'd rather my subscription fee go into doing interesting "new" (how new is it when its from a 15 year old game?) things, than just copy and pasting the exact same progression system from 2.0 update after update.

Again though, these are optional traits. Nobody would really be able to check you have them and kick you as a result... It's not like Swiftcast or something, where people can observe you never using it or check your Black Mages level to see if you even have it. Nobody would really be able to discriminate based on such traits. I mean perhaps someone with a parser could, but that's already against the rules so /shrug. Perhaps something like Auto-Life, but that's OP single player tier and I really don't think anyone would suggest we get something like that.